Siberian Wildfires and Heatwaves in Alaska: How the Arctic Is Nearing a Point of No Return

Many of the globe’s far northern regions have been experiencing extreme weather events over the past two months. Plumes of smoke have been picked up by satellites from wildfires across Alaska and Siberia and Greenland has experienced rapid ice loss as usually frigid regions have experienced heatwaves and record temperatures.

Smoke rises from a wildfire on July 3, 2019 south
of Talkeetna, Alaska near the George Parks Highway.
 Alaska is bracing for a dangerous fire season with
record warm temperatures and dry conditions in parts of the state.

 

As the Arctic faces extreme weather events caused by climate change, the events could have ripple effects that accelerate temperature increases across the world, according to scientists and experts.

“The basic chemistry and the basic physics of how the atmosphere absorbs heat — there’s no path where you can imagine that the Arctic is going to start to cool off again,” says Brian Brettschneider, a climatologist and post doctoral fellow at the International Arctic Research Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

“Cold air has to come from somewhere, cold air doesn’t just magically appear, and that somewhere has to be accounted for in the entire energy balance of the Earth. Right now the whole Earth has just warmed up,” Brettschneider tells TIME. “It would take a dramatic reversal of the chemical composition of the atmosphere.”

Read the story from Time by Jasmine Aguilera - “Siberian Wildfires and Heatwaves in Alaska: How the Arctic Is Nearing a Point of No Return.”

High temperatures break records in Alaska for 4th of July

Anchorage, Alaska experienced the hottest fourth of July in its recorded history yesterday. What is known as America’s “coolest city” hit 90 degrees Fahrenheit.

Record heat at Anchorage, Alaska, for the fourth of July.

The heat caused the city of Anchorage to cancel their firework show saying it is too much of a fire danger. With 650,000 acres burned last year in the state, this precaution is understandable. 

Read story from the Nation of Change by Marlee Kokotovic - “High temperatures break records in Alaska for 4th of July.”

‘The damn thing melted': climate change sparks scramble for the Arctic

On Monday, a Danish container ship - the Venta Maersk - set off from Busan in South Korea packed with Russian fish and Korean electronics.

A visitor walks past an inflatable model of a TOR-M2DT
Arctic short-range air defence missile system at the
Army 2018 expo in Kubinka, Russia.

On September 22 it will dock at Bremerhaven in Germany.

The bit in between could change the world.

Thanks to climate change, the Venta was able to take a short cut over the top of the globe – the first container ship to do so – through the Bering Strait between Russia and Alaska, above the desolate Siberian coast, past worried polar bears, melting permafrost and huge new Chinese-funded gas fields, through Arctic waters that Russia wants to control, and down past Norway, where this week a group of academics, analysts and policymakers were fretting over what it all means.

Read the story from The Age  by Nick Miller - “‘The damn thing melted': climate change sparks scramble for the Arctic.”

A Cruise Ship Just Sailed the Northwest Passage, Thanks to Climate Change

The famed Northwest Passage is being
opened up because of climate change.

The Northwest Passage originated as an unattainable and lethal legend when Europeans arrived in the Americas and longed for an easy sea route across North America. Now, a cruise ship has successfully traversed the route in only a month.

It wasn’t until 1906 that Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen successfully — but with extreme difficulty — navigated what had, until then, been a theoretical journey. In the years since, heavily fortified ships with icebreakers could only make it through the floes of the Arctic in summer, when sea ice was at its lowest.

Now, a massive 14-deck cruise ship has completed the journey that was a pipe dream just over one hundred years ago — and it’s raising a lot of concerns.

It took the Crystal Serenity just a month to glide through the waters from Alaska to New York — Amundsen needed three years.

What made this speedy voyage possible?

Read the Care2 story - “A Cruise Ship Just Sailed the Northwest Passage, Thanks to Climate Change.”

Warming oceans blamed for seabird deaths

Warming oceans thought to be killing
seabirds in their thousands.

AT THE end of the highway, 200 miles from Anchorage, sits a small fishing and tourism town where, in early January, thousands of dead common murres, or guillemots, were washed ashore.

These penguin-like seabirds littered the tidal wracks so densely that beach walkers had to be careful where they stepped. And beyond Homer, tens—probably hundreds—of thousands of these birds have drifted in dead along Alaska’s vast coastline or have been found far inland half-dead in the snow.

Alaska is home to about 3m common murres, which spend most of their lives on the open ocean but come to shore to nest in dense colonies on coastal cliffs. The female lays a pear-shaped egg so pointed at one end that it will roll in a circle, helping to keep the egg from plummeting off the bird’s narrow nest. Murres are renowned divers, using their wings to “fly” down 600 feet (183 metres) under water in search of a meal.

Read The Economist story - “Murre mystery.”

Kerry paints an apocalyptic vision of climate change

J

John Kerry - apocalyptic vision
 of climate change.
 

ohn Kerry painted an apocalyptic vision of climate change last week as he addressed a global warming conference in Alaska.

 "You think migration is a challenge in Europe today because of extremism, wait until you see what happens when there's an absence of water, an absence of food, or one tribe fighting against another for mere survival," the US secretary of state warned. Few experts would argue with Kerry's analysis of the future, but some would argue his vision is already upon us.

Read The Independent story - “Refugee crisis: Is climate change affecting mass migration?”

Climate change making fires worse, fires making climate change worse

W

hat we see happening in America’s wildfires and their close cousins in Australia, bushfires area positive feedback loop for climate change.

Writing in the shadow of massive fires in America’s west, Grist discusses the feedback loop in its story - “Climate change is making wildfires worse and wildfires are making climate change worse”.
 

It says: “It’s the season when wildfires rage, and this year they’re raging particularly hard: In June alone, Alaska saw 1.1 million acres go up in flames. In California, firefighters had responded to 3,381 wildfires by July 11, “1,000 more than the average over the previous five years,” The New York Times reports in a big feature on wildfires in the state.

“And that’s likely not a coincidence. A study published this week in Nature Communications connects worsening wildfire seasons to climate change, and suggests the trend will continue in the years ahead as climate change rolls forward. “Wildfires occur at the intersection of dry weather, available fuel and ignition sources,” the study’s authors write. Of those factors, “weather is the most variable.”
 

“The study also suggests that wildfires will themselves play a role in driving climate change, creating a nasty feedback loop.”

Climate change demands attention, but many look away

T

hose who should be watching have looked away.

And while admiring the immediacy of business as usual, a scary new normal is happening right before the eyes of those who care to look.

Saloon tells us about wildfires in Alaska reporting that the Arctic state is battling two major blazes against a backdrop of rapid warming.

The story - “Alaska’s climate hell: Record heat, wildfires and melting glaciers signal a scary new normal” – reports the fire crews have been preparing for a season marked by unusually hot, dry weather — and following a winter marked by below-average snowfall, blazes are worsened.

“Any associations you might have with Alaska being a generally chilly place, actually, were belied by last month’s heat wave: with average temperatures 7.1 degrees above normal, the state had its hottest May in 91 years of record-keeping,” it reports.

Fossil fuel companies gleefully plunge into the artic in search of profits

F

ossil fuel companies long excluded from the frozen artic rub their hands with glee as hitherto frozen deposits become accessible.

Sweeping warnings that whatever fossil fuels are already in the ground should stay in the ground seem inaudible to companies bedazzled by the potential profits which until now have been hidden below the frozen artic.

fuelfix in the Houston Chronicle reports: “Shell’s contracted Polar Pioneer drilling rig began its 12-day trek to Alaska on Monday, though Arctic drilling opponents in kayaks were trying to block its exit from Puget Sound.

“By early afternoon, at least 24 protesters had been detained by the Coast Guard and fined $500 for violating a 500-yard safety zone around the rig. The rig itself also stopped moving Monday afternoon, after a slow initial transit that saw two tugboats pulling the Polar Pioneer away from its months-long perch at Terminal 5 in the Port of Seattle.

“It is headed first to Dutch Harbor, Alaska, a waypoint on its journey to the Chukchi Sea northwest of Alaska.”

Read the fuelfix story - “Shell drilling rig leaves Seattle for Alaska waters”.

Another 'canary in the coal mine' - this one in Alaska

South-Eastern Australia is considered by many to be the “canary in coal mine” in relation to climate change.

And so it is, for our part of Australia has already been subjected to a decade long drought, huge dumps of rain, and much unseasonal weather.

However, the “canary in coal mine” title is now being applied to parts of Alaska that is also already feeling the impacts of climate change.

A story on Slate headed, “Baked Alaska” discusses the surprising changes those who live there have noted.

“Something does seem to be going on in Alaska. Last fall, a skipjack tuna, which is more likely to be found in the Galápagos than near a glacier, was caught about 150 miles southeast of Anchorage, not far from the Kenai. This past weekend, race organizers had to truck in snow to the ceremonial Iditarod start line in Anchorage,” Slate reported.